


Oh The Webs You Weave

by mae-mil (maevemil)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Beholding!Jon, Canon Asexual Character, Does it count if I dont find a way to mention it?, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Ill remove it later if i cant but i wanna, It ties into the au now, M/M, Martin was Gertrude's assistant first, Originally that was just because i didnt want it to happen but..., Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, The not!them doesnt take Sasha, but that comes later, probably?, so diverges before canon even
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2019-11-29 00:13:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18215570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maevemil/pseuds/mae-mil
Summary: Statement of Roan Crowe regarding a week with no control over their body.Statement of Nikolas Antov, regarding the spiders... hunting him, and the man who he believes to be controlling them.Statement of Adelaide Kelly regarding thoughts that weren’t her own.Recently there has been a huge influx in statements regarding mind control. Always the same behaviour, always a similar description, and so far none of them have recorded digitally.There have been no deaths reported, and normally Jon would leave the research to his assistants, but all of these statements seem to have something else in common... The childhood memory of a book that almost killed him.





	1. Chapter 1

"Statement of Roan Crowe regarding a week with no control over their body. Original statement given 30th September 2016. Statement begins."

 

* * *

 

I've never really felt in control of my life. When I was a kid it was my parents, when I was an adult… it was still my parents. Basically, my parents were pretty awful, and extremely controlling and when I was finally able to move out I didn’t look back. I got a scholarship and a part-time job and tried my best to stay afloat without them.

~~I did fine I did okay~~ I did good. I’m still here, amn’t I? I’m surviving, and it’s better then it would be if I was still relying on them. Been in school a few years, made friends, and started transitioning. Life’s been good enough. Until about a week ago.

I’m not sure what started it, but I’m certain it wasn’t natural. It had something to do with the man I met that day at least.

My day up until that point was normal. Hell, my life, shitty as it was, up until that point was normal! I have no idea why he picked me and honestly, I pray there was a reason. Because the thought that it was completely random, that it could have been anyone, that I could have avoided it if I’d just been somewhere else in that exact moment? That’s terrifying.

So I was out for coffee, alone thank god, when I bumped into him, dropping my bag and almost spilling my drink all over the both of us. Wish I had. Bastard. Of course, I immediately went to grab my bag, but so did he, waving me off and saying ‘no, no, let me’. As soon as he said that, it was like every muscle in my body seized up, and I was stuck, giving him the chance to get to it first. I don’t think he noticed for a moment. I was standing there, frozen and terrified, and he just handed me back my bag like nothing was wrong.

 

* * *

 

The ink was smudged there, and Jon felt a sudden twinge of sympathy as he read. He was reminded of his own childhood and found himself struggling to breathe when he continued.

 

* * *

 

 

“He stared at me for a moment, like he was wondering why I wasn’t moving. I could see the exact moment when the realization of what he’d done sunk in. He even had the gall to apologize! Like he had no choice! Like this _had_ to happen! He gave me this pitying look, handed me my bag back, and disappeared into the crowd. A few seconds after I lost track of him, I started to move.

The hold on me hadn’t disappeared though, _it_ was what was pushing me forward. It was like being trapped in my own body, I had no control over anything I was doing. It was awful.

The control only lasted about a week, but it felt like an eternity. I saw the man multiple times that week and I _knew_ it was him doing this to me, but I also knew there was Nothing **.** I **.** Could **.** Do **.**

I just went through my regular schedule for the week, but even my friends noticed something was wrong. I wanted to tell them what it was, and I wanted to scream, and I wanted to cry, but instead, I just told them I was fine, and they let it go.

I didn’t even sleep. Like I literally did not sleep that week, I just… Wandered. I’m not sure if hanging out with my friends, knowing it wasn’t really _me_ was worse, or if the nights were. Walking around in the dark, all alone, no control over anything I was doing.

I survived. Obviously. I can’t sleep without nightmares, but I’m alive. But ~~I’m scared he mi~~ I’m worried he might come back, and ~~I can’t I don’t~~ I’m worried. Just… worried

 

* * *

 

 

“Statement ends.” Jon paused and took a deep breath while he shuffled his statement notes, before moving forward.

“This statement is… interesting. I wouldn’t suspect it to be supernatural in origin, perhaps some sort of mental illness, except for the fact that we've been getting a lot of these statements in the Institute recently. Same behaviour, similar description, and none of them record digitally. No one's been confirmed dead yet at least. That is, of course, of those who survived to make their statement in the first place.” Jon shivered “We may need to start looking into this man further… For now, however, I sent Martin and Tim to look into the statement. Mx Crowe has no history of mental illness in their family, further evidence that there is no natural explanation for this experience.

Strangely, they seemed to be much less… traumatized by their experience as one would expect when we followed up. They claimed it was starting to feel more and more like a dream as time went on, and that they’ve been seeing someone to deal with the… nightmares.

Only time will tell if this is the truth, or an attempt to… convince themself it is, but considering Tim _apparently_ got their phone number (which I _will_ be talking to him about later) we may not need an _official_ follow up to find out.

Many of these statements seem… similar... to an experience I had as a child, but further research is necessary to confirm…

Recording ends”

Jon sighed as he turned off the recorder. He really shouldn’t be so focused on these statements. Most of them were the same, statement giver bumps into whoever this man is, and they lose control of their self for an indeterminate amount of time. The longest they’d heard about was three months, and that woman was still unwilling to leave her house according to her husband. None of them had hurt themselves or others that badly during that time, (there had been one instance where someone had crashed their car while in that state, but no one had died) but knowing these monsters he could probably easily make that happen, and almost definitely had before. It’s very easy to keep deaths from seeming suspicious when you can control the victim, the killer, _and_ the police.

Besides, there were so many of them! Normally they’d get a few statements about the same monster, it was inevitable if any victims escaped, but they were spread apart, and it wasn’t _this many_ . They’d gotten six already _that month_.

So Jon was… professionally interested. No matter how personal it felt.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You ever fall in love with a character as you're writing, with their death already planned? I tried to resist, but a friend convinced me to keep them alive. Shouldn't have given them shitty parents. Maybe they'll show up again later?


	2. Chapter 2

As Jon cleared the papers off his desk he heard a faint knock at the door.

  
“Come in.” He continued to organize and looked up to see Martin pushing the door open, his hands full, holding a tray of tea.

  
“Jon? Are you done with the statement?”

  
“Yes, Martin.”

  
“Brought you some tea…” He came in, shutting the door behind him. “So, uh... what were you reading?”

  
“Oh. Nothing important to you. It’s a statement we’ve followed up on already.”

  
“Oh?” He put the tray down on the only cleared off spot on Jon’s desk and sat down in the chair in front of it. “Which one?”

  
Jon took a moment to move a few more things to the side, and to rein in his exasperation with Martin’s questions before answering.

  
“Statement 0163009.”

  
“Oh! The… The... Roan Crowe right? Their statement?”

  
“Yes. I- um… I’m considering looking further into these statements-”

  
“What? But me and Tim have already done as much as we could?”

  
“I know… I’m just not sure… maybe there’s more we can find out if we keep looking?”

 

“Even if there was! It’s dangerous!”

  
Jon raised an eyebrow. “Are you serious? It’s not as if we’re any safer here, and you know that.”

  
“Yes, well...”

  
“Martin... It’s fine.”

  
“Alri- alright…” he looked down at the floor and began to fuss with his sleeves.

  
“Well…” Jon sat up and took the cup off the tray in front of him. “Thank you for the tea Martin, but I need to get back to work...”

  
“Right, right… I’ll-” He stood up. “I’ll get out of your hair then.” He headed out and Jon sighed.

 

* * *

 

It had been two days since Jon had taken on the… personal project of investigating the mind control statements. It was apparently harder to inconspicuously find addresses and phone numbers of statement givers then he'd hoped. He knew Martin wouldn’t help him, so he figured he’d ask Tim, even if he did ask questions about it.

  
“Oh, Tim. I need your help with something.”

  
“Yeah, boss?”

  
“I need the addresses of as many of the people who gave their statements about mind control recently.”

  
Tim turned around and gave him a skeptical look. “The statements me and Martin have already fully researched?”

  
“Yes.”

  
He shook his head and stood up “Fine. Come on.”

 

* * *

  
Well.

  
Jon was going to have to update some statements.

 

* * *

  
“Supplemental begins.

  
Thanks to Tim’s help, I was able to find the addresses I needed, and I’ve done… some more follow up.   

  
Up until now, there have been no deaths that seemed to be a result of this man. Technically there still aren’t… However, according to my investigation, each and every person who has given a statement at the Magnus Institute about this strange mind-controlling monster is now missing.” Jon sighed and leaned back further into his chair.

  
“At first I hadn’t noticed anything was wrong. According to the roommate of the first woman I attempted to find, she has moved to America with her girlfriend and hasn’t left any way for anyone to contact her.  
After a few houses though, the fact that none of the people I was looking for still seemed to live at the address they’d given the Institute was obviously suspicious.

  
And then I talked to the husband of Terence Fawcett, the woman who was under this monster’s control for about three months and who apparently has only just left the house for the first time a few weeks ago. She didn’t say why, and she hasn’t come back since. He filed a missing person’s report but refused to call the Institute. Evidently, his wife had been completely terrified of coming back here, and when she disappeared, he avoided telling us.”

  
Jon grimaced, feeling frustrated at his failure.

  
“I’m not sure if this is a lead or a setback, but since absolutely none of the victims were available for follow up, we’re going to have to assume the disappearances are connected. Most of them also had some sort of excuse for their disappearance, which they usually told others in person, which makes me suspect this is another case of mind control.

  
At the moment, however, this is all the information we can get, as many of the victims either didn’t have any friends or family I could talk to or didn’t have any who would talk to me. Supplemental ends.”  
Jon leaned further back into his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose, and sighing in frustration. He’d hoped he’d at least get something out of these-

  
“Archivist.”

  
“Ahh!” Startled by the sudden noise, Jon fell backwards, falling out of his chair, and narrowly avoiding hitting his head on the wall behind him. He righted himself and looked up to see a door that definitely wasn’t there a moment ago.


	3. Chapter 3

“Michael?!” Jon stood up, pushing back against the wall, trying to keep as far away from the monster on the other side of his desk as possible. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“You’ve been searching for someone.” Michael looked around absently as he spoke, picking up the box of tissues Jon had on his desk and pulling out a few.

“Umm… Yes...” He moved forwards slowly, back towards his desk, knowing a few centimetres of space wouldn’t help him if Michael decided he wanted to hurt him and trying to maintain composure to the best of his current abilities.

Michael didn’t look up from his current task of shredding all the tissues that he continued to pull from the box as he talked.

“So the Eye is searching for information on the Spider?”

“The what?” Jon had no idea what ‘the eye’ could be, but ‘the spider’? He’d already wondered if this could have been connected to Mr. Spider, could he be correct? “Who’s the spider?”

Michael looked up and, seeming slightly confused, continued to respond “Oh, Michael remembers him. From before.”

“You remember him? From where?” He reached slowly for the recorder on his desk, not moving his eyes from the thing in front of him.

“No Archivist. Not me, Michael Shelly. I was never him, he is now me”

“Michael Shelly?” Jon tried to click the tape recorder in his hand on, before realizing it was already recording. Quickly, he placed it back on his desk and returned his line of sight to the monster in front of him.

Said monster let out a breath that… seemed to Jon to be a sigh?

“The Eye has left its Archivist without knowledge and you are floundering.” He replaced the tissue box on Jon’s desk as he spoke and moved across the room towards his door.

Hand on the door, he turned back for a moment to speak again, grinning in a way that made Jon's head ache. “Be careful with the spider Archivist. I may not like you, but this one has just as many reasons to.”

And then he moved through the door and was gone.

“Wai-!” Jon reached for the door, before quickly stopping himself, realizing what an awful idea that was.

“What am I doing…?” he sighed, and looked down in frustration. The floor was a mess, covered in tissue scraps.

“Of course…”

* * *

 

Jon spent the entire day trying to figure out who this Michael Shelly the other Michael had mentioned was. He still wasn’t convinced Michael had been telling the truth about them not being the same person (or not-a-person).They must be! Jon had no reason to believe him when he said he wasn’t, but what a strange way to lie…

It didn’t matter much either way however, seeing as Jon found absolutely nothing relating to either of them in his search.

He had planned to do most of this investigation alone, but he’d already screwed that up, first by mentioning it to Martin and second by securing Tim’s help for his interviews. With all that in mind, what was one more assistant (who probably already knew about it from Tim if he was being honest) to help out?

So, he convinced Sasha to help him out.   

“You want me… to find this random guy for you? With only a name, and no explanation for why you need this done?”

“Basically...? It’s for the Institute, so don’t worry about that.”

“Right.” She rolled her eyes. “Because that’s _so_ reassuring.

* * *

 

Despite his best efforts, Jon wasn’t able to spend his entire time working on solving this mystery, he had _actual_ work to do as well. Of course, considering he had been spending quite a lot of time focusing on that, he had a lot of work to finish. On a normal day he would stay late anyway, so it wasn’t much of a change, except for the fact that he had double the work, and the same amount of time as usual to do it.

It was stressful and taking forever,

“Jon?” Martin poked his head into the office and Jon grunted in response, mostly ignoring Martin in favor of continuing to work. “Jon. Are you leaving soon?”

“No Martin. I have work to finish." He frowned and mumbled under his breath. "If you’ll let me that is."

“You’re staying late again?”

“Unless you think I should leave all this work unfinished?”

“I mean…”

“That’s what I thought.” He turned back to writing.

“I- I could help you…” Martin mumbled.

“What?” He looked up and frowned confusedly.

Martin spoke up louder “I could help. Maybe it would mean you could go home sooner…”

“No, I’m alright.” He went back to working.

Martin moved further into into the room, and up to Jon’s desk. “Why not?”

“I don't need the help. I'll be fine.”

“Jon.” Martin stared at him disbelievingly, “You’ve got about twice as much work to be done here as I usually see you working on in the _morning,_ Just let me help you a little.”

Jon looked up from his work and saw the determined look in Martin’s eyes. He didn’t really have the energy to argue and, if he was being honest with himself, he really _could_ use the help.

“Alright, fine.” He grimaced and gestured to the chair on the other side of his desk, “But if you end up making this more difficult you _will_ leave. Without argument.”

Martin nodded, and sat down.

He ended up keeping Martin for much longer then he knew the other man would normally stay at work for, but he never complained and Jon was begrudgingly grateful for the help.

* * *

“Jon!” Sasha burst into Jon's office, holding her laptop in her hands and grinning. “I think I've found the guy you asked me to look for!”

“Michael Shelly?” Jon stood up from where he was seated at his desk, ignoring the paperwork he’d been working on before she came in. It was nothing important anyway.

“Yeah! It was pretty easy too. He used to work here!"

Jon was surprised, although it did seem to explain why Michael was always showing up around the Institute.

“Which part of the Institute?”

“Believe it or not, right here in the Archives! He was one of Gertrude’s old assistants!”

“Ahh. And he is currently?”

She cringed slightly. “...Missing. Since December 2009 apparently. By now he’s been declared dead in absentia.”

“Of course he is.” Jon sighed, frustrated at what was probably just yet another dead end. Typical. His disappearance was quite suspicious though. If it wasn't connected to this ‘spider’ it seemed likely it was at least slightly related to Gertrude’s death. There was no way all this could be a coincidence. “Any family or friends we could talk to?”

She looked down at her computer for a moment, before looking back up at Jon and shaking her head with an apologetic look on her face. “None alive that I could find.”

“So this lead means nothing?” Jon flopped back into his chair.

“Well...” She turned the laptop around and placed it on the desk. “I- I _was_ able to find this photo of Michael Shelly…”

Jon sat up and leaned forward. There on the screen was a photo of a tall man with sandy blond hair. Looking at him didn’t make Jon’s head hurt, and he seemed completely normal, but there was no denying the resemblance.

“He looks exactly like our Michael.“

“Which _means..._  Michael used to work here! Not sure what this means, but asking around for anyone who knew him, or knew someone who knew him could be helpful to figuring it out.” She took her laptop back and continued typing.

“Hmm.” He looked back up at her. “That’s true… When did he start working here?”

“It seems like he started working at the Institute in October of 2005, and in the archives sometime in 2007. He stopped working...” she tapped a few keys on her laptop “When he- He stopped working when he disappeared apparently…” She frowned.

“That’s about what I was expecting. Well, thank you for your help Sasha, I will be taking your advice on what to do next, and I appreciate that you did this for me.”

“No problem” She closed her laptop casually, though Jon could see the curiosity shining in her eyes “So… You gonna tell me why you knew to look into this guy?”

“I’m not sure if that's the best idea at the moment.”

She scowled mockingly.

“Fine. Keep your secrets then.” She shoved the laptop into her bag, turned, and headed out the door.

Jon rolled his eyes at her unnecessarily dramatic response but was interrupted by her poking her head back in quickly.

“Next time you need my help you’re telling me all about it first though! Think of it like payment.” And then she was gone.

“Alright,” Jon mumbled to himself. “I only need to find all the people who worked anywhere near Michael Shelly from October 2005 to December 20th 2009. Easy. I can do that...” He stared at the desk for a moment.

“I _may_ need a _little_ bit of help from Martin.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm pretty sure a lot of people reading this already follow me on tumblr, but if not, I'm @mae-mil over there too. (and yes, I mostly post about the Magnus Archives)


End file.
